MT. HIRA DETAILED NOTES ON STASILAND COLLEGE VCE English – Unit THREE | Sena Kocoglu Chapter Summaries CHAPTER ONE – Berlin, winter 1996 • Anna is introduced as hung-over - Setting: Alexanderplatz station. • Loss of self-control/vulnerable - “Tomorrow bruises will develop on my skin, like a picture from a negative”. Pg. 1 • Waiting underground for her train (to Ostbahnhof) to get to Leipzig (East Germany). • Alexanderplatz station -> “monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to make people feel small.” Pg. 1-2 • Walks to toilet (not coping well with underground environment) – “the sick smell of antiseptic is overpowering.” Pg. 2 • Approaches “large woman in a purple apron and loud makeup” – selling condoms, tissues and tampons. Unafraid of detritus life. 65 years old. Pg. 2 • “Berliner Schnauze – snout. Its attitude: it’s in your face”. Pg. 2 • Lady has been working there (train toilets) for twenty one years. She’s familiar with customers. • Berlin Wall – East & West Berlin is introduced to text. • Berlin Wall runs “a couple kilometres from here”. Pg. 3 • Lady – “You know what I’d really like to do? I’d really like to have me a look at that Wall of theirs.” Pg. 3 * * * • On the Ostbahnhof train – “The rhythm soothes like a cradle, hushes my tapping fingers. The conductor’s voice comes through speakers reciting our stops.” Pg. 3 • Northern Germany is introduced as a dreary, sullen environment. This is where she lives –“I inhabit the grey end of the spectrum: grey buildings, grey earth, grey birds, and grey trees. Outside, the city and then the country spool past in black and white.” Pg. 3 • “Last night is a smoky blur.” – Klaus is introduced – Pub. Pg. 3 • Remembering the past while hung-over. “I remember things I haven’t remembered before … memories I call my past.” Pg. 3 • “I remember my mother’s moustache in the sun … acute hunger-and-loss feeling adolescence … burnt-chalk smell of tram brakes in summer.” Pg. 3 • Anna begins explaining her connection to the German language. “I remember learning German – so beautiful, so strange – at school in Australia...” Pg. 4 • “…the language of the enemy.” Pg. 4 • “And I liked the order, the directness that I imagined in the people.” – Relating characteristics of the language to the people who speak it – Germans. Pg. 4 • Came to live in West Berlin in 1980s – “…I wondered long and hard what went on behind that Wall.” Pg. 4 • On the train – “I think about the feeling I’ve developed for the former German Democratic Republic”. Pg. 4 • Describes her feeling as “horror-romance”. Pg. 4 • Romance – “Dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past”. Pg. 4 • Horror – “the horror comes from what they did in its name.” Pg. 4 • First visit to Leipzig – 1994 – almost 5 years after the wall fell. • East Germany is described as “secret walled in garden” and “place lost in time”. Pg. 5 • Die Wende – the Turning Point. “The Wende was the peaceful revolution against the Communist dictatorship East Germany, the only successful revolution in German history” Pg. 5 • “A map bore no resemblance to how life was lived in Leipzig.” Pg. 5 * * * • Looking for Stasi museum in the Runden Ecke – Formerly, it was the Stasi offices • East Germany Ministry for State Security. • “The Stasi was the internal army by which the government kept control. Its job was to know everything about everyone, using any means it chose.” Pg. 5 • Between 1989 and 1990 – Over • “I shrank like Alice.” Pg. 5– Could be understood in different ways – not only literal/physical. • Ministry of State Security – Leipzig Division • Print of famous photograph in 1989 – “It showed a sea of people holding candles, their necks craned up to the building, staring their controllers in the face.” Pg. 6 • Signals for observation poster – “… a choreography for very nasty scouts.” • Stasi artefacts on glass cases: fake wigs and moustaches, handbags with built-in microphone disguised as flower decorations. Bugs were implanted in apartment walls. Pg. 7 • “… Pile of mail that never reached the west. One of the envelopes has a child’s handwriting on it in coloured pencil.” – Evokes feelings of sadness or even anger in readers. Pg. 7 • Frau Hollitzer – runs the museum. • “She looked friendly, but she also looked as if she knew I had been making mental ridicule of a regime which required its members to sign pledges of allegiance that looked like marriage certificates, confiscated children’s birthday cards to their grandparents …” Pg. 8 • Smell samples theory – we all have our identifying odour, which is left on everything we touch. • Taken from: clothes worn close to skin, seats sat on wiped with cloth – then placed in glass jar. • Frau Hollitzer introduces Miriam – “… a young woman whose husband had died in a Stasi remand cell nearby.” Pg. 9 • Rumoured that the Stasi orchestrated the funeral; “substituting empty coffin for a full one, and cremating body to destroy any evidence of the cause of death.” Pg. 9 • “I imagined not knowing whether your husband hanged himself, or whether someone you now pass in the street killed him.” – Evokes feelings of sadness/anger in readers. • Finds part-time job in television. • The search for Miriam’s story begins the search “for some of the stories from this land gone wrong.” CHAPTER TWO – Miriam • Job at overseas television service – Viewer Post: answers letters from viewers who’ve been beamed at & have some queries. • “I write contained and appropriate responses. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to be German.” – Shows personal interest. Pg. 11 • Alexander Scheller – Boss • Scheller’s off-sider – Uwe Schmidt – “Uwe’s main job as adjutant [assistant] is to make Scheller seem important enough to have an adjutant. … To appear busy and time short…” Pg. 11 • Uwe – “deeply distracted by desire.” Singing love songs with “tears on his face.” Pg. 11 Funder exposes a sensitive side to Uwe • “…looking at me like food…” Pg. 11 • Letter from German living in Argentina in response to “puzzle women” in Nuremberg “puzzling together the shredded files the Stasi couldn’t burn or pulp.” Pg. 11-12 • Requests an item on “what things are actually like now for the East German people instead of … poor cousins.” Pg. 12 • Funder suggests doing an item “from the eastern point of view.” Pg. 12 • “…no point us doing items on the Ossis for their gratification.” – Shows the way Western Germans see the Eastern troubles as irrelevant or unimportant. Pg. 12 • “I just think that we should show some of the stories from there.” Shows Anna’s interest in East German stories/perspective before she starts writing. Pg. 12 • “There must be people who stood up to the regime somehow, or were wrongfully imprisoned.” – Passion Pg. 12 • Western opinion – “They aren’t a nation.” Pg. 13 • “I could hear my voice getting higher” Pg. 13 • “Should I tell him that no-one here is interested in East Germans and their stories, because they don’t form part of our overseas image?” – Façade/Swept under the rug. • “You won’t find the story of human courage you are looking for.” Pg. 13 • “…bunch of downtrodden whingers… They just had the rotten luck to end up behind the Iron curtain.” Pg. 13 • Uwe – “solicitous as a doctor with a patient who’s had bad news.” Pg. 13 • “No-one is interested in these people.” Pg. 13 • “… The whole Stasi thing… it’s sort of embarrassing.” – Germany’s embarrassing history that is chosen to be kept silent about. Pg. 13 • “History is made up of personal stories… issues were being swept under the carpet… and people along with them” Pg. 13-14 • “Why are some things easier to remember the more time has passed since they occurred?” Pg. 14 • Miriam Weber – “small still woman” Pg. 14 • Miriam’s apartment – roof of her building, “one big light space under the eaves. Pg. 14 • Anna – “damaged head” Pg. 14 • “I know she has not told her story to a stranger before” Pg. 14 • “Cranes are picking over holes open as wounds” Pg. 14 • Miriam – “officially and Enemy of the State at sixteen” – her age being sixteen is repeated NUMEROUS times throughout Miriam’s story, it’s emphasised. Authorial purpose: Anna often mentions her young age to position readers to feel sorry for her. Pg. 15 • Pride – “how she became such a fiend” Pg. 15 • Disbelief – “country created enemies of its own children” Pg. 15 • 1968 – University Church in Leipzig was demolished without public consultation – this ignites Miriam’s trouble with the state. • “Miriam and her friend Ursula thought this was not right” – had an idea for “justice”. “it wasn’t fair” Pg. 15 • Roneo printers, typewriters, photocopiers: controlled by license in the GDR • Made leaflets: “Consultation, not water cannon! People of the People’s Republic speak up!” – Critical of the state – disliked. Pg. 16 • Put them up at night, wore gloves and hid them in milk crates – proves their awareness of the fact that if they’re caught, there would be consequences. • “They were clever” Pg. 16 • They were caught after they put leaflets in mailboxes of students they knew – parents reported it. • “It seems so harmless” Miriam comes back quiet but strong (A.P: mentioned “quiet but strong” to show seriousness, but doesn’t make Miriam look “bad”) “At that time it was not harmless. It was the crime of sedition (treason)” Pg. 16-17 • Government controlled all media outlets e.g. newspapers and magazines. • Sedition was handled by “the secret police” not ordinary Volkspolizei. • Stasi were “methodical” • Men with gloves and dogs search Miriam’s house and find rubber letters in carpet – put in solitary confinement for a month.